Claiming Insurance? Time to Clean Up Your Social Media!

The title may seem like we are trying to help you make a false insurance claim, but in reality it is very common for insurance claims to get rejected simply because information available to insurance provider is of a conflicting nature.

Apart from the information provided by you in your insurance claim, the insurance company would want to conduct some background checks to verify the authenticity of your insurance claim, and guess what; the first place they’ll visit is your social media profiles. However, there are a few steps you can take to ensure you do not give access of any such information to you insurance company which may allow it to refuse paying out in case of an incident.

Apart from the information provided by you in your insurance claim, the insurance company would want to conduct some background checks to verify the authenticity of your insurance claim

Don’t Post Holiday Updates

We understand the temptation to share every detail of your holiday on social media to let all your followers know about all the amazing places you visited, all the sights you explored, and all the delicious food you had. However, if you have insured your house against any potential robbery, then know that many insurance companies are now rejecting claims coming from those people who shared information about their holiday while still on the holiday.

The rationale behind such rejection makes perfect sense: you are effectively letting potential robbers know that you are away and hence have probably left your home completely empty. Hence, the argument goes, you effectively forfeit your right to any claims against a robbery as it was probably the information you posted on social media that led the robbers to your place, even if that may not be actually true.

The best thing to do in this case is to simply not post any information about your holiday travels until you are safely back home. That way, as long as the actual holiday dates don’t overlap with the posts about such holiday you make on social media, you are good to go and will have a valid claim against any robbery which may have happened while you were away.

Avoid Posting About Your Accident

If you are one of those who detail every happening of their lives on their social media profiles, whether it be an update on Twitter in the form of a thread or a never-ending post on Facebook, then either make sure the information you post on social media matches what you have reported to the insurance company word by word, or otherwise it’s much better that you don’t post anything about your accident on social media at all.

The best thing to do is to simply not post any information about your holiday travels until you are safely back home

For example, there was a woman who claimed damages for a car accident from her insurance company only to find her claim getting rejected because the story she detailed to the insurer did not match what the insurance company found on her social media profile.

Her insurance policy only covered any damages sustained to her car only if she was the one who was driving it at the time of the incident, which is exactly what she reported to her insurance company. However, upon visiting her social media profiles the insurance company found out that it was actually her son who was driving the car when the accident happened, effectively invalidating her insurance claim.

Keep Your Social Media Private

The best step you can take to avoid such an issue with your insurance company is to simply place your social media profiles in private mode so that they may not be accessible by anyone you do not know. Anyone who is not in your friends list would not be able to see any information you post on your profiles, and that includes insurance companies as well.

This way, not only will you have the freedom to share whatever you want about your amazing trips or about any incidences which you may experience in your life, but also have the confidence that none of this information would be used against you.

However, even in this case, you need to keep your list of friends, or people who have access to your social media profiles, very limited so that your information remains in safe hands. You never know what kind of people you may have in your friend list, and it’s entirely possible that someone from within your friends list may use your information against you.